Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Konrad, Martin" <[email protected]> · Wed, 6 Apr 2016 22:06:45 +0000

Ok, with your hints I figured it out :-) The three important pieces of 
information are:

1. dbLoadTemplate only supports a subset of the MSI keywords. The 
"substitute" keyword is only supported by MSI.
2. There are three different types of files:
    a) DB files (may or may not contain macros; macro substitution is 
supposed to happen at dbLoadDatabase time) - recommended file name: foo.db
    b) template files (DB files that are supposed to be expanded by MSI 
at build time)
    c) substitution files (substitution file syntax according to section 
6.12.1 of AppDevGuide) - recommended file name: foo.substitutions
3. The EPICS build system can automatically expand template/substitution 
files:
    b) It will automatically expand foo.template to foo.db if one adds 
foo.db to the list of DB files in the Makefile.
    a) It will automatically expand foo.substitutions to foo.db if one 
adds foo.db to the list of DB files in the Makefile.

With this information my problem was easy to solve: All I had to do was 
rename my mydevice.db template file to mydevice.template to make sure 
it's expanded by MSI. This pulls in myinput.db as often as needed for 
the device (using MSI's "substitute" and "include" keywords). In the end 
I get a long DB file that I can refer to in my substitutions file. The 
substitutions file is expanded as before at dbLoadTemplate time for 
maximum flexibility (I could as well have MSI expand it).

Thanks for your help!

Martin

-- 
Martin Konrad
Control System Engineer
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams
Michigan State University
640 South Shaw Lane
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321, USA
Tel. 517-908-7253
Email: [email protected]

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System